


when there's a later

by nymja



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers for 8x3, Tumblr fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 16:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: Arya and Gendry after the battle, as seen by other people.





	when there's a later

**jon**.  
He doesn’t feel anything as dawn breaks. His legs move by themselves, one foot in front of the other. He doesn’t even know where he’s heading until he hears his boots crunch on the snow. The noise makes him look down.

There’s bodies in front of him. So many, that he almost misses that of Theon Greyjoy. When he does, he lets out a shaking exhale, tries to register the information. For now, he fails, and steps around him. His arm is heavy, Longclaw dragging behind him in the snow, making a shallow trench.

It’s Bran he notices first. His brother sits under the red leaves of the weirwood, expectant. At the base of his chair there is a pile of shards, some already blown away by the wind.

Jon swallows. His knees are buckling from exhaustion, but he stays standing.

“Where’s Arya?” He finally manages. Because he doesn’t know how he knows but he does.

Bran doesn’t smile. He doesn’t look at what’s left of the Night King or Theon or even at Jon, really.

“She didn’t expect to live,” is all he says. “But she did. And now everything’s changed because of it.”

Jon can’t even frown. “She’s alright, then?”

For the first time, Bran has something close to a grin. “She was worried. But stags survive winter just as well as wolves.”

Jon is too exhausted to parse the meaning, and instead gives to temptation and lets himself fall into the snow, surrounded by two of his brothers.

(later, he sees them in the courtyard. sees how her hand grips his forearm, how he squeezes his eyes closed as though in pain when he buries his face in the crook of her neck. later, he will have questions. but later is not now, and so jon closes his eyes and listens to the wind)

 

 **davos.**  
He’s happy to see the lad made it. It’s not that Davos had his doubts, exactly, but he didn’t expect any of them to see the dawn and the Baratheon boy keeps finding himself in trouble. The smoke doesn’t clear, but the noise of battle does stop--some silences more deafening than others.

Davos wipes the back of his hand across his forehead, squinting his eyes and walking toward the center of the Winterfell courtyard. It’s where the survivors are gathering, regrouping to collect their dead. Gendry is collecting weapons from them, face grim.

He claps him on the shoulder. “Long night, wasn’t it?”

Gendry looks at him, and there is something miserable in his expression that seems to go beyond the carnage they stand in. His eyes are narrowed, hard.

“You heard anything ‘bout the Starks?” He finally mutters, and his gaze drops down to some kind of staff in his hands.

Davos shakes his head. “No, not yet.” Then he takes a guess: “’M sure Jon’s fine. The boy’s had nine lives and I’m sure something felt it right to give him another.”

Gendry swallows, and the nod he gives is tight. Davos thinks, for an odd moment, that he’s near tears. He brings his other hand to Gendry’s opposite shoulder.

“You going to be alright?”

His looks at the ground again. His inhale is ragged, and then he steps back.

“Work to be done,” he whispers, and then he leaves before Davos can say another word.

(later, davos sees them in the stables. her hand cupping his face and his expression entirely transformed by a smile. and the old man will laugh to himself, happy to find that it’s not all misery and hardship for the young)

 

 **sandor.**  
He’s the first one to notice her, stumbling out of the snow and trees and into the piles of rubble.

“You mad bitch,” he greets.

Arya looks up, and he recognizes what her glassy eyes and pale face mean. He’s seen it. He’s had it. He thinks about the Red Woman and her fire, and not for the first time he wonders what terrible fucking choices he made to end up where he is now: covered in the dead, wondering what some feral girl saw and why he fucking cares.

“You’re not dead,” she says flatly.

“It’s not the first time I’ve been left to die.”

After a moment, he does what he thinks is best, and tosses her a skin.

She almost misses it, and that’s when he realizes the sorry state they’ve found themselves in. But she lifts her trembling arm and bites out the cork. Spits it on the ground. Good, he’s finishing that if she’s not.

“Tastes like piss,” she says, before she drinks it all.

“Not my fucking fault, is it?”

The glass fades from her eyes as she wipes her mouth with the back of her arm. Her eyes dart up and down his body.

“You alright?”

He grunts.

She nods. “Then stop being such a miserable bastard.”

She walks past him. He turns his head, and sees her heading toward that twat with the hammer.

(later, he’s there for the bloody fucking wedding)

 

 **sansa.**  
She doesn’t have time to process what’s happened to her, what’s happened to her home, before Winterfell needs her. She isn’t as strong as some of the others, but she works as best she can to bring the bodies out, to lay them with respect so they might be identified. After that, she is surrounded--by hugging, by crying, by screaming. And so she wears the mantle of the Lady of Winterfell before she can of Sansa Stark, doing her best to unite children with their families, to take inventory of what has been destroyed.

So much has been destroyed.

“Sansa,” Tyrion says to her side, as they work side by side to attend to the wounded soldiers (her stitching is still neat, still beautiful). “You ought to turn around.”

She does.

Across the courtyard, she sees a short, dark haired girl limping toward the back of a tall man with a hammer. Sees her hand reach out and tentatively grab a fistful of his shirt. Listens, as the man lets out a strangled noise caught between a laugh and a sob before he envelopes her in his arms and lifts her feet off the ground in a slow, half-circle.

Sansa does not realize she’s crying until Tyrion hesitantly hands her a handkerchief.

“Maybe we’ll have happy songs of this yet,” he muses.

Sansa closes her eyes, and for a moment lets life instead of death wash over her.

(later, she and her sister will go back to work, but for now, she leaves it all be)


End file.
